Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@farmerman,

We are headed towards a national curriculum here (it is in the final planning stage) and I believe the final version will allow individual schools to have a couple of specialty subjects, but the core subjects will be English, Maths, Science, Phys Ed and my memory fails me here...some others anyway. The core subjects will have a syllabus, but the teaching to that will be up to the individual teacher. I dont know if it will stifle creative teachers as there are several awards handed out to the best teachers each year and they seem to get them for innovative techniques as well as quality of teaching.

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this helps tha kids understand what all the yelling is about.

A comendable aim if parents can be pacified about it.

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@farmerman,

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as recently as the 1920's evolution was NOT allowed to be taught in most schools at all

That was a piece of information that I was unaware of...it took me back a bit. I was taught evolution by Franciscans. I thought it had been taught everywhere in government schools. Do you know why it wasnt implemented after Darwins theories had been widely accepted ? I suspect in the UK it was...spendi will advise....but here it was so well established I assumed it was world wide.

Trivia - Darwin visited Australia and one of our state capitals is named after him.

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@farmerman,

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Totally unfounded assertion thats a favorite dodge of yours spendi. Weve got priests using their little charges for personal sexual gratification. Weve got Evangelical religious leaders being investigated for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, and weve got religious leaders in third world countries responsible for stoning women whove been raped because "Its the tribal way"

So what? A morality isn't responsible for any of that. It has nothing to do with the morality unless you are saying that the morality itself causes those things and not something else. You would have an argument if you pursued that line. And you would need to show that getting rid of the morality caused a reduction in those activities. That getting rid of the morality was a sort of magic wand to cure the human race of its tendency, which would seem to be innate and thus evolved, to engage in disreputable actions.

It's as if you think that if there were no priests doing what you say everything is okay by you. Which is getting close to thinking you might need some priests like that to prop up you argument. You do mention it a lot you know.

It doesn't answer the point. And what's wrong with a dodge that is logical. I try to make those sort of dodges, the logical ones, my favourites. (Speaking of favourites--I'm favourite to win the Pick-Um game for the second year running.) There was no assertion. And as an assertion expert you should know that better than anybody.

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Ill put the morals of atheists up against yer best Bible thumpers.

I daresay you would so long as you picked which atheists and which Bible thumpers. (Was "Bible" a Freudian typo?) I'll have the Marquis de Sade, La Mettrie and Wilhelm Reich for my atheists and Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham and Mother Theresa for my Bible thumpers.

As a literary aside--Walter Shandy's wife, Tristram's Mom, cared not one jot or tittle for any of this stuff. Or much else for that matter.

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I know that youre convinced that we owe everything to Christianity but Id like to think that were not as progenically restricted in our civilization as that. Id like to think that weve benefitted from the Greeks, the Arabs, Romans The Slavs and Celts and the AMerinds

I have never said we hadn't benefitted from those cultures. I've been reading Plato most of this week. I have a shelf or two of books about the Classical period. I know how disreputable things can get without some guidance from the One God. And with it in some cases.

But Christianity gave "progress" a new meaning. It thought the unthinkable. The illegal. Pythagoras was taking big risks. And mathematics was freed from earthly bounds. Watch a rocket take off and see the aesthetic similarity to a cathedral. Energy gathered up and pointed into the infinite. The pure Faustian mission. The light world. Then look at the light in our oil paintings and compare it with the "no light" of all previous art. The same with perspective. The lines meet in the infinite. The Mosque is designed to keep out light. The cathedral to worship it. The Mosque is for regions where they are sick of light. I've been. It gets on the nerves does a sun beating down from a cloudless sky for months on end. The cathedral comes from where light is a necessity.

We went from beast and man power to power at our fingertips. Beast and man power has limits. You would never have been a geologist without Christianity. How do you suggest you would have started in about 1,000 AD with a different system?

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@High Seas,

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Got to add the Chinese to that list, for gunpowder

AND
The first parachute -Leonardo copied a Chinese acrobat design
the first earthquake warning device
paper
paper money
printing
compass
I decided to check if I missed anything important and found a good read here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions

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"Guns, Germs, and Steel",

A good read...there is another, previous book about the tropics and why it will never amount to much...I have racked my brain trying to remember it (it was only 20 yrs ago I read it) but it deals (amongst other things) with the high growth rate in the tropics and how this destroys the fertility of the soil.

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Minos's Crete 1,700 years BC

Also known as Atlantis.

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@Ionus,

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I suspect in the UK it was...spendi will advise..

We were expected to pick it up from comics and adventure stories and sport. For it to diffuse into us. Teaching it is trite. And it gives the idea that it's a "subject".

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@Ionus,

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the high growth rate in the tropics and how this destroys the fertility of the soil.

We can make the soil talk.

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LOUISIANA UPDATE (Further Details)

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New high school biology books recommended by state
(By Melinda Deslatte, The Associated Press, November 13, 2010)

A state panel recommended Friday that Louisiana's top education board adopt a new batch of high school biology textbooks, despite complaints that evolution is taught too matter-of-factly in the books.

An advisory council, made up of educators and lawmakers, voted 8-4 to recommend that the new life science textbooks be approved for use in high school classrooms. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will make a final decision on the books next month.

Most of those who testified before the council supported the books and objected to any inclusion of disclaimers about the theory of evolution or of provisions about intelligent design, which has been barred by federal courts from being taught as an alternative to evolution.

"There is no major research university in this country that teaches intelligent design or anything like that. It is simply not science," said Kevin Carman, dean of the LSU College of Science. "We need our textbooks to be focused on what is scientifically accurate and not religion."

High school senior Zachary Kopplin said any attempts to include a disclaimer against evolution in a biology text book or promote intelligent design and creationism would harm Louisiana's reputation and undermine the teaching of science to students.

Many people who submitted written comments objected to the proposed biology books, saying they should include information about intelligent design and don't offer enough questioning about certain parts of evolutionary theory.

"Children need to understand what is an assumption and what is empirical evidence," said Lennie Ditoro, who works with the Christian conservative group Louisiana Family Forum and asked the council to recommend that BESE not adopt the new textbooks.

Ditoro said the proposed textbooks include errors and outdated material and fail to explain the many scientific challenges to evolution.

"Teaching Louisiana's students to look carefully at all the data and better understand evolution will only make them better thinkers, citizens and scientists. Assertion by dogmatic proclamation that no controversy exists over evolution is neither factual nor consistent with our state's science benchmarks," wrote Charles Voss, a retired LSU engineering professor, in his written objections to the textbooks.

Friday's meeting was the first time the advisory group had met since 2002. It includes, principals, librarians, teachers, curriculum directors in local school districts and two lawmakers.

Both lawmakers, Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, and Rep. Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe, voted against recommending the textbooks. Nevers raised concerns about the costs of the textbooks and the length of the seven-year contracts with textbook companies.

State education department officials outlined a book review process that includes a committee of teachers who comb through the proposed books, the receipt of public comments at libraries, in writing and in person, the discussion by Friday's advisory council and then debate before BESE.

Local school districts decide which books to use from the list of BESE-approved textbooks, said Nancy Beben, who oversees curriculum standards for the state Department of Education.

Districts can use a limited slice of their funding for books outside of the state-approved list, if they choose. Local teachers and school districts also are allowed under state law to use materials in science classes beyond the state-approved textbooks, though not to promote a religious doctrine.

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@wandeljw,

Turn it up wande for Gawd's sake. It's the same shite every time and has nothing to do with the topic.

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@spendius,

You may more problems than being able to stay on topic.

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@Ionus,

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I dont know if it will stifle creative teachers as there are several awards handed out to the best teachers each year and they seem to get them for innovative techniques as well as quality of teaching.

It's bound to stifle creative teachers. That's the objective.

But no worries about the awards. As long as you have awards somebody will win them. And you will have the awards because they are useful for propagandising the glorious teaching profession which, from my brief excursion into it, is fully staffed with bigoted, pompous nitwits. And the Big Nite is a good piss-up with the movers and shakers getting their names in the papers (same lot year in year out) and even, hold your breath, -------- being on telly.

It's a bit like exams. If you have them people will pass, some with flying colours, because they daren't fail everybody as that would drag the good name of the institution in the mire. So get 'em in again lads and if one of us fails in order to show how straight and above board everyhing is, it's taking one for the team, and that has a greater dignity than a piece of decorative vellum which the rest of us get and when we have risen to positions of power and influence we'll see he doesn't have to go a begging--won't we--? (Sings For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.)

Get off your high horse Io and try to live up to your siggy for ****'s sake. There's nothing worse than a phoney high-falautin siggy line.

A National Curriculum my arse. That's how Laurence Sterne and Rider Haggard were stolen off all the kids. And much else besides. That's how to get a bunch of activist's hands on it, thrumming females to the fore, and not a single one of them fuckers has the slightest interest in the kids except as a rink on which to skate. And the more syrup and lard they use in denying that fact the faster you should throw them in the river.

It's putting all our eggs in one basket. Diversity is evolution's signature line.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

LOUISIANA UPDATE (Further Details)

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New high school biology books recommended by state
(By Melinda Deslatte, The Associated Press, November 13, 2010)

Ditoro said the proposed textbooks include errors and outdated material and fail to explain the many scientific challenges to evolution.

What scientific challenges to evolution?

1 Reply

@spendius,

You think Monty Pyhton are :

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phoney high-falautin

???? I am glad I didnt use the Goons.

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That's how Laurence Sterne and Rider Haggard were stolen off all the kids.

Just because you like some literature doesnt make it essential. You are not God, spendi, you are just a naughty little boy.

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@Ionus,

I didn't say Python was "phoney high-falautin ". I said you are. I wouldn't expect Python to get all pompous and self righteous about a national ******* curriculum like you did. Grin grin.

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@spendius,

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I didn't say Python was "phoney high-falautin ". I said you are.

I didnt write the sig line. I transcribed it. I like it for reasons totally removed from why I support a national curriculum. As someone who has been posted to several states, it is ludicrous how much children have to change their education because the states had different curriculae.

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I wouldn't expect Python to get all pompous and self righteous about a national ******* curriculum like you did. Grin grin.

Neither would I, but I would expect them to pull the piss out of all the states going in different directions.

1 Reply

@Ionus,

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it is ludicrous how much children have to change their education because the states had different curriculae.

That should give the little monsters a sound grounding in absurdity. You should be in favour of that according to your oft repeated quote. After all "ludicrous" is close to "absurdity".

You're trying to look vicariously cool and you're an uptight member of the ******* respectable bourgeois class of the counter jumping lower-middle-class.

1 Reply

@spendius,

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bourgeois

bourgeois evolved from the Old French word burgeis, meaning "an inhabitant of a town" . I live in a small town...it is stretching things to say I am bourgeois.

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the counter jumping lower-middle-class.

Not even close..... Very Happy

I hit the counter, fell to the floor and am now looking up at the lower class. How is the lower class going anyway ?

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@Ionus,

Same as always. The other classes are still piled up on its shoulders.

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@rosborne979,

Also, what "errors and outdated material"?

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@High Seas,

Theres plenty of outdated material in many texts. They still include lots of the "Neo DArwinian" crap like "industrial melanism" . I think that, with the idea that almost ALL evolution may be considered to be adaptive, the very simplistic math expressions like Hardy Weinberg, may become a bit passe.

I have a college evolution text from the 50's and 60's by ERhlich and this has a whole lot of things that weve later found NOT to betrue about DNA.
Keeping evolution updated is different than publishing implied "errors and omissions" as if it was some kind of plot to hide the truth. However, the CReationist pipeline is quick to try to confuse any modification as something that the "scientists have been trying to hide"

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@farmerman,

There's a new theory - a medical doctor ponders the improbability of our low-entropy state and attributes it to "biocentrism" (sic):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-are-you-here-new-theo_b_781055.html

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